Thursday, December 28, 2006

the holiday reclamation project

My friend D. once told me that occasionally he will stop and question everything he thinks he believes about himself. Does he really want to live in a city? Does he really want to do the kind of work he's been doing? I remember feeling shocked when he told me this. Who does that? What happens when you periodically undermine your identity?

Because D. revealed this to me shortly after the Fourth of July, the first belief about myself that I threw out there is that I detest holidays. They unleash a normally subdued part of me that hates to be told what to do. I love to give gifts, but not because it's some day in December and everyone else is doing it. I love to go to parties, but I don't enjoy being made to feel like a sociopath if I opt out for New Year's Eve. I won't even touch Valentine's Day. So it was with some difficulty that I asked myself what it would look like if I didn't hate the holidays.

Thus began the holiday reclamation project. Beginning this year, I have taken back the holidays. First up was Thanksgiving, and as many of you know, I hosted the First Annual Orphans & Singles Thanksgiving Potluck. I intend to make this a yearly event, upon which orphans and singles across the globe (who happen to be my friends) can depend and arrange their travel plans accordingly. Each year when Christmas arrives, having visited my family earlier in the season when travelling is not a nightmare, I will depart for a three-day yoga retreat at one of the many beautiful sanctuaries within driving distance of my home. I will make sure to return in time for New Year's Eve, in anticipation of which I will have secured tickets for me and my single girlfriends/latest suitor to an enviable live music event.

As unbelievable as it may have been earlier this year, I think there's hope that I will one day be someone who - ugh, it's still hard to write it - loves the holidays.

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